Or simply CashToken, CashOut, MyCash, PayCash, SendCash, Gift Cash…
2 Likes
Indeed , though some of these are likely trademarked or copyright already
CashOut seems very familiar, was it a chain of pawn shops that tried to emulate Cash Convertors ?
CashPal ? 
CyberSpondoolies?
I like MobileMoney but surely that has already been used?
I was going to insert SAFE either at the start or middle but then we run into the previously mentioned credibility issues with crapcryptos
1 Like
Cyber is the name of the digital cash in Maidsafe’s own patent.
Anonymous Transactions (FIG. 1 —P 24 )
According to a related aspect of this invention, the ability to transact in a global digital medium is made available with this invention. This is achieved by passing signed credits to sellers in return for goods. The credits are data chunks with a given worth preferably 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 etc. units (called cybers in this case). These cybers are a digital representation of a monetary value and can be purchased as described below or earned for giving up machine resources such as disk space of cpu time etc. There should be preferably many ways to earn cybers.
1 Like
That blog was linked to by David in a weekly update one of the first times DBCs were mentioned. Which means you’re doing some good research and that they’re aware, I believe.
Was just attempting to explain DBCs to a non-technical friend and was wondering if I was exaggerating…
In the heat of the moment I ended up claiming that Safecoin already had the potential without DBCs to take away the bank’s job of being the place where you keep your money. And then with DBCs, it could also potentially take away from the bank the job of creating money and put it in the hands of anyone who has safecoin.
How close to the truth is this, in a practical sense?
I’m imagining a flow like: you farm, you are rewarded with Safecoin, you create a DBC for your friend, you give it to them. You’ve ‘created’ some money in the world, with the help of everyone’s favourite autonomous network. Thoughts? Am I missing something?
5 Likes
I think one of the functions we tend to ignore because it is implicit, and because it’s often painted as a fault, is letting someone else look after the security of your money. Crypto folks are well aware of the risks of this, but tend to ignore the benefits of not having to worry about losing keys, being robbed etc.
Holding a large amount of crypto is like carrying around a large amount of untraceable cash. Few people would be comfortable with that, and if it was common people would have to put a lot of effort into security, or a lot of people will be getting robbed.
Banks are in general very good at not letting people steal all your ready cash, whereas holding your own keys in your head or on your person is a much understated risk IMO. Much of the time they carry the cost of such theft because it is their job, and if they didn’t, well there’s much less reason to use a bank.
In time Safe applications will I think mitigate that, but it is a new area and we don’t know what will work in practice here, especially for the general population. Yes multi-sig and so on offer technical ways to address this, but we don’t yet have practical or sociological solutions and those will take time.
Most people are not convinced that managing your own money and its security is necessary, and they have a point. So I think you are not far wrong @JayBird about the potential of the technology but it has to move first from theoretical and potential application to practical implementations, then to adoption and social acceptance.
Now might be a good time to start thinking about how we manage this. Maybe there are already non-custodial solutions to this? I’d be interested to know what is out there and what ideas folks have for replacing that approach.
11 Likes
At some point (distant future) could Safe Network’s answer to the FDIC which serves to give people confidence that their funds in banks won’t be misappropriated be some kind of CDIC (Community Deposit Insurance Corporation)? Such an entity could go a long way in getting scores of people over the initial hesitancy of using SNT and DBC’s.
How about Myfi
1 Like
A DBC is more like writing a check as I understand it. You have the issuer and the recipient.
The main road block with making a printed DBC like cash is there is no offline way of knowing whether that certificate has been spent already without getting online.
I thought earlier today, couldn’t you make the recipient ‘public’ so that any identity could accept/receive it? I’m not sure if that is possible but the road block remains on how to prevent a bounced DBC. Just think though if there could be a offline DBC that is receivable to anyone.
I thought maybe there could be a way of locking up or burning the SN that a printed DBC represents, so when a DBC is printed it represents that value but then you have to worry about counterfeits or at the least check online that it is what it is therefore defeating the benefit of being able to accept a random DBC offline in a “trust less” manner. Not to mention printing on something durable enough to exchange over and over.
It’s actually quite fascinating how many malicious acts a printed fiat accounts for but when it’s all backed by a gun it becomes less fascinating. The point is there are layers of issues to make a real world replacement of cash that can be achievable to the common person. If all a person needed was a computer, internet, printer with ink and special purpose paper to print spending cash that would be pretty remarkable.
Is anyone aware of attempts at solving these DBC problems or ideas of their own? I feel like it could be disruptive in a whole different way than existing just in the digital realm but we are already becoming more and more digital so maybe a check like offline DBC is good enough for our world?
What if we take the idea of cash but it is literal digital cash. No internet connection needed just a smartphone and a special wallet. When online you can load up the wallet for DBC use. Once offline those funds are locked but able to be issued to any receiver with a smart phone and a wallet that follows the same conventions. The recipient can request an amount over Bluetooth and the sender confirms with bio metrics, PIN, password, what have you. That just like other offline CRDT operations for Safe is then synced up with the network once back online.
Thoughts?
The closest thing I know of is the OpenDime.
1 Like
Those are amazing. Thanks for sharing!
We could pretty much do all of this, very with just paper, or a share link, apart from checking the balance offline.
Although the trade off vs opendime is you don’t need a USB port (so it’s much more mobile compatible) and it’s less wasteful in terms of throwaway hardware.
Also, if you think of how many merchant transactions, or even private sale transactions, require an internet connection perhaps it’s a reasonable tradeoff.
2 Likes
It’s easier to counterfeit than cash. However we can do things like
- New key each note
- Mint many to new keys you create
- Give the note to somebody who can tell locally (likely) that this is valid network agreed cash
We need to know more.
Can we tell this is under your control?
Yes in 2 ways
We can re-mint to another key (even the recipients provided key (that does not need to exist on the network)
The recipient can give us a code and we sign with the same owners key of this cash (so off line check it is/was valid)
i.e. We can say here’s the cash and proof, when you do X I will send you the private key.
We can also (hopefully soon) have hardware where the secret key is not available to anyone and on that hardware we can have a dbc for the hardware’s public key. SO here’s cash.
So for safety we can say a DBC is valid as a network agreed cash but we cannot say if it has been spent already and that means an on line check (it’s a quick network call).
If we have hw that we are sure folk cannot get to the secret key but physical access can force it to sign, then we have cash that is offline sure to be not spent. I suspect we can get there but they will be used a cold wallets. Unless for really remote areas with no ability to connect.
6 Likes
Might we also be able to do a “half-offline” approach, if the recipient is known? DBC gets signed by both parties ahead of time so you know it will be accepted by the mint, and then can go into ‘offline’ mode for a period in which the transaction happens, and then is confirmed by the mint when back online?
2 Likes
I’ve not read all the details about the DBC proposal (is there a formal one?), but given the design allows time to pass between when they are exchanged and when they are redeemed, it could be interesting.
One use case could be for NFTs or other tokens, with the DBC being a token to represent the underlying asset. In short, it wouldn’t need to be safe network tokens being represented but any token. @Antifragile touched on this forum wrapped tokens above.
Secondly, given it doesn’t need to be immediately redeemed, this could form the basis of atomic swaps. 2 or more DBCs could be minted ahead of time, which could allow for a mechanism to swap them simultaneously at a later time. This would be powerful, as it is the basis for distributed exchanges, even for complex underlying instruments.
Perhaps a wrapper which defines which DBCs being exchanged by each party could be created. The network could then read this wrapper and process all the transfers as a single step.
Edit: To expand with an example, you could have wrapper (contract?)10 ETH in DBC A, 1 BTC in DBC B and an NFT for art in DBC C. The wrapper could define that A and B will be provided by one party and C would be provided by the counter party. The network would then transfer the DBCs as the wrapper defines when submitted. You could have X DBCs and Y parties for lots of flexibility too.
9 Likes
For this and the rest of your point we could easily have an optional Data field. Then you can shove anything you wish in that Dbc. Then I think we would have some very real, very powerful options as you point out. Digital NFTs are a no brainer then too. We can include the data which can be a SN pointer to any file/filesystem etc. private or public. The list goes on really, but just simply putting a digital art complete in the DBC works. When spent it’s now with a new owner.
12 Likes
This is what makes a DBC check like except slightly better. As I understand it you can make the DBC out to a recipient (though maybe the recipient doesn’t yet have an account so it’s attached to a new account to be claimed? Like the pre loaded gift card or gifting account idea) and then you can hand it to them physically but if it is as good as confirmed by the network to go straight to their account why bother with meat space at that point? Just send it electronically with AT2.
The priv key in the open dome stick is generated inside and never known so is that BTC stuck in the device? Can it be spent online? Or is it like I suggested earlier where that money is locked up basically and is a physical representation of the currency to be ‘handed off’ trustlessly in meat space. Still a lot of questions to answer. I think we’ll land on something brilliant though.
Having a data field for DBC’s could be amazing for physical hand off or storage of trade secrets, whistleblower info, NFT art, etc
If we could have DBC types that are interchangeable through atomic swaps that could be very handy too. What about the idea of half offline smart contracts?
Once a particular DBC (that is part of a contract) is reissued or what have you then some other operation executes.
The idea of offline exchange settlement or secure storage for an exchange is also interesting.
I really like the idea of a hardware item you can handoff as value though.
1 Like
Nice thing here. No accounts only keys. So I can create a key, tell you the public key (does not need to exist on network, like bitcoin) and you sign a Dbc over to me. I can check your Dbc is signed over to me and I know only I hold (cheers @neo 
) the priv key. So it’s mine, all mine and nobody knows me. When I want I can then present to the network and know I can cash this in (re-mint to somebody else). All with no account.
Then if somebody says to you, hey I created a key and I am gonna store stuff with it, can you fund me. You just sign over a dbc for whatever value to that person. They can get it any time. They might take it, create a new key and send to themselves and you won’t know what data they stored etc.
Lots more opportunities, no need for AT2 (although we use a variant for the mint process). I think its will open doors for us.
9 Likes
Lets hope the person has more than “hope” they have the private key.
LOL - I could not resist
3 Likes